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Hurray at last you will be relieved to see some photos! I am sorry they have taken a long time but the site took ages to update.

Anyway, we have had a smashing start to our term, the Wrens have come back full of beans but my goodness, I have been blown away by their work this week. They really have progressed in their learning skills and their listening and attention work is just lovely to see now. As a class, I really do feel that they understand their part to play in the learning process and are taking responsibility for looking, listening and joining in at learning times – I am a very proud teacher!

In maths this week, we have been using money to buy things in a shop. I do hope you enjoy your weekend challenge! It all stemmed from me trying to buy a sweet for Mr Audritt for 10p (that was all I had left after buying milk on my home from running club) and I just could not find anything. Whilst I frantically scanned the shelves and looked at prices, I suddenly thought it would be great for the Wrens to look at prices and assess if they have enough money to buy something! So there you have it! A shopping trip to find something for 10p. I wish you all the very best of luck! I wonder where you will search? A charity shop? Weighing fruit/veg in tesco? A sweet shop? Have fun and please, please send me a picture if you can. I would love to know how your Wren got on and any comments/pictures will go in their learning journeys, and of course, get a magic moment from Mr Snell. I will be partaking in the challenge myself and will post on Twitter if I something!

Have a lovely holiday Wren Class Families. Thank you all so much for your support this term. I have only given a little homework for holiday news at the beginning of next term. Please just keep going with reading and spend some time enjoying the company of your little poppets!

I do have some lovely pictures to share but I am still waiting for the site to be updated.

We have had such a great week, the children have really loved learning all about space and the planets and the rotation of the earth around the sun. I have been so impressed by their eagerness to learn about the world and how things work. So much great learning has come from the children’s own fascinations – that is why Early Years is just the best to teach!

In our Letters and Sounds work, we have been working hard on our application skills with Bike and Read. When you hear your child read this weekend, it would be really helpful for me to hear your thoughts on their progress in reading by leaving me a little note in the home/school diary. I think they have all come on leaps and bounds!

In maths next week we are going to be having a number trail and practice our counting on skills as well as beginning some work on money. Give your Wren the heads-up by letting them explore your money container!

I am sorry I can’t post any pictures this week – Mr Snell needs to buy me more space so I will upload them for on Monday or Tuesday next week.

This week has just flown by! We have done so many great things: We made up our story about Plop, we have have been doing lots of Bike and Read, we have written our Bat Fact Sheet, we have been junk modelling, we have learnt about people who work at night and we have made repeating pattern videos which Mr. Snell will judge on Monday. The winning video will be shown in assembly and the winning Wrens will get a prize from my prize box.

Next week we are going back to addition to take our next step which will be learning to count on from the first number. In our Letters and Sounds, the class have been split into two groups. “Franklin” group are learning Phase Three sounds and “Mind craft” Group are consolidation Phase Two sounds and practice “applying” their skills to reading and writing CVC words (cat, mat, vet, etc).

In our topic work, we are going to be learning about the planets and how the earth moves around the sun. This was one of the things the things the children wanted to know about – I had to do a bit of studying myself to get this right (Mrs Rogers, I know you will read this so perhaps you might want to refresh your memory on how this works also!).

If you have any more junk modelling, please send it in on Monday for our tray, the Wrens are really loving exploring joining.

Happy New Year Wren Class Families! We have had a great start to the year. It was so lovely to see the Wrens after their holidays, they all seem to have grown so much. Thank you all for sending in the homework, it makes chatting about the holidays so much more fun and we love to see all the exciting things the children have been up to.

Our topic this term is “Discovering the Dark”. The children have given me a list of things they want to learn about, they include: the sun and the moon, how torches work, stars, nocturnal animals, people who work at night and what makes it dark in the mornings. We have a lot to get through!

In our maths learning, we have been adding numbers together. The children are really becoming confident and this now and I will send out some home-learning on Friday so you can see how they are doing for yourself. Next week we are learning all about shapes. Could you please send me in any recycling you have at home on Monday so the children can begin to create models, (I will then send it back to you, it will just be in a different shape and have lots of tape on it).

In English next week we are creating “Bat Fact Sheets”. I will be tweeting a home challenge for you and your Wren to find our interesting things about bats. They get so excited about learning interesting facts and it is a great stimulus to get them writing.

The Wrens have been loving the Forest School learning and are great at embracing the mud. They are beginning to take more risks and are becoming much more confident grows with the outdoor equipment.

Please keep up with learning at home and practising reading/Letters and Sounds/number targets. It really does make a huge difference to your child’s rate of progress. We will be changing books and hearing readers as usual on Monday so please send in books and reading folders. Also, if you have heard your child read, could you please write in the home/school diary as it is really useful information for me have when reading with them.

This has been such a lovely time to spend with our little Wrens. Reading Christmas stories, singing Christmas songs and rhymes, they are going to be so excited by the time they finish next week.

We have still been doing lots of learning thought and will continue to do so right up until next Wednesday. We have been doing lots of writing and really encouraging the Wrens to just “have a go” and writing and to write the sounds they can hear. We don’t really mind at this stage if it is just two or three sounds, we just want them to pick up a pen and have a go!

In maths we have been adding one and two more to numbers. Ask your Wren some questions so they can show you how great they are at it. Today we did it with bananas and some of the children started to count on two fingers to get the answer.

Next week we will continue with number writing and adding and learning lots more about Christmas.

Have a lovely weekend and I have to say, I am so proud to be the teacher of Wren Class, they are an amazing group of children who make my heart smile everyday.

The end of another great week with lots of lovely learning. We have learnt lots about Road Safetly, I have sent home another home learning sheet so you can let me know the brilliant things your Wren shares with you about being safe on the roads. Thank you so much for taking the time complete them, I love to read the things they say and do. It really gives a great insight into how they are making links and connections with home and school learning.

In maths this week we have been adding using the part/part/whole model. We will continue this next week and I will be making an addition trail to see how the children use their skills independently. We have also been counting sets of objects and comparing numbers using the language more/less/fewer. A really good game you could play at home is to sort dominoes into two groups of more than six and less than six. It will give you a really good idea of how much your child understands about number and place value.

We have finished teaching Phase Two phonics – YAY! Now we are going to work on “apply” skills and get as many children reading and writing words as we can on the lead up to Christmas. We will move onto Phase Three in term three.

We will be reading and changing books on Monday so please make sure you send in all books.

Oh my goodness, I was so incredibly proud of our Wrens today – they were A-MAZ-ING! They all listened brilliantly even though they were so excited, they were great buddies to each other and they really enjoyed the film, sitting beautifully for the whole film. It was a real pleasure to take them and I wish we could do it more often. I think they all loved the coach the best though and funnily enough, were very excited to see Radco from the coach window.

This week has flown by, it feels like we have a microwave classroom where we get a whole week in two days (that’s how it feels for me anyway). We have been adding this week in maths by using cubes to represent numbers. We have been talking about adding two parts of a number together to get a whole number and the model is called “part/part/whole” It uses circles to represent the calculation and helps the children understand how number are made up. It is a slightly different model to the example of adding I showed at the information session but is still uses the concrete, pictorial, abstract ethos. It will give the children a real secure understanding of how to manipulate number and ensure they have a deep understanding of place value and the “oneness” of number. It is slightly different due to a new planning tool we are using called “White Rose”. We have found it very interesting this week and we will keep you informed of how the Wrens are doing with addition. I did send home some resources at the information sessions and I will be sending our the same resources to everyone on Monday (so you will get an extra set if you came along to a session – how lucky is that!).

In Letters and Sounds learning, I will be finishing teaching phase two sounds next week. Please, please keep going with target sounds learning at home. After next week, we will spent time applying our phonics learning by focusing on reading and writing skills before moving on to Phase Three sounds. I to aim to get most children on short ladder sounds before Christmas so that they have a large bank of sounds to work with to help with blending and segmenting skills.

In topic work we have been mixing potions in a science based activity and although this has taken quite a long time, the children have loved it and the language they have been using has been very adventurous. We have been using words like: dissolving, granules, powders, transparent, liquids and effervescent! Wrens can use such exciting words. If you hear any of these at home, please let me know!

Ok enough reading, here are your photos!

No, here’s some more: next week we are talking about different emotions and painting poppy pictures with fingers so we can reflect on what we learnt about Remembrance and also continuing with Diwali – so much learning to be done!

My goodness we have a fabulous first week back and crammed in lots of brilliant learning. In maths, as well as focusing on our individual number targets, we practiced using the language of comparison to talk about the different sizes of lots of objects. At this age, the temptation for children is just to use “big” and “small” but there is a whole host of other language to use that is much more complex. It is this we have been practicing! I sent home a little sheet for you to fill in so that you could let me know if you Wren starts to explore these words and I do hope you begin to hear them say “longer, longest, tallest, shortest” etc.

In Letters and Sounds, we have had lots of children this week who have achieved their curly c target and are now working on long ladder sounds. It is really important to keep going at home with practicing target sounds so that we can begin to work on reading and writing skills alongside the phase two sounds.

Next week we have a number focus in maths. The children will be reading and ordering numbers as well relating numerals to sets of objects. We have a very exciting maths week set up and lots of the play opportunities we provide next week will be focused around maths based games. On Wednesday evening at 5.30 I will be doing a maths based information session for parents. It will outline where the children will need to be with maths learning by the end of the year. I will be talking you through the way we teach maths and give you ideas of games you can play at home to help you Wren improve their skills.

We had a great PE lesson last Monday and I have to say that the children did very well with getting changed. We are going to be working core stability and balance and will introducing the class to using apparatus tomorrow. They will love it! At home. please continue to encourage your child to get themselves dressed as this really does help their independent skills.

One final thing before your photos… We have had lots of clothing in class this week that does not have names on, so we have started writing names in with Biro (either on a tag or hem). If you would rather we didn’t do this to your child’s clothes, please put a note in the home school diary.

I do hope you enjoyed your firework celebrations and I look forward to seeing you all safe and well tomorrow.

I expect you are all really ready for a well deserved break. Our little Wrens have done so well this term and settled brilliantly into the new routines. Their learning skills are also coming along nicely and the children all know that it is their job to use the “responsibility” value during taught sessions. I have been so impressed with how well they have adapted to the challenges involved in being “learners” and I am sure that those of you who came to the Letters and Sounds session will agree that they focused and participated with the learning beautifully.

The Wrens really enjoyed performing in the Nursery Rhyme Talent show and we were so very proud of them all. They were all so brave and I couldn’t have asked for more from them. Thank you all so much for embracing the nursery rhyme challenge – I counted up all the rhymes you had sung at home and it was a staggering 480! Give yourselves a huge pat on the back, a hug an a kiss on the nose – brilliant!

For the holidays, please keep going with daily counting. Make it a fun and active by asking your Wren to collect a certain number of items (cutlery is always good), count going up the stair and count back coming down, look at car number plates and read the numbers, count the steps you walk and then count back again. Also try and keep the curly c learning going, shaving foam in the bath is a really fun way to get them writing. You could also try putting flour/rice on a tray to write in.

I did put a holiday homework sheet in the reading folders. Please don’t feel you have to do special things to fill the circles. It is just lovely for us to have a stimulus to discuss after the break as children often find it hard to remember what they have done, having pictures really does help to get the conversations going!

Most of all relax and enjoy some precious family time! Take care and see you all soon… if you would like to send me tweets over the hols, please feel free! I always love to see what our Wrens are up to when I am not around!